


Shedding Light

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 5000-10000 Words, Alien Planet, Beach Sex, Blow Job, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e18 The Light, First Time, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Season/Series 04, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-27
Updated: 2007-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While they're withdrawing from the addictive effects of 'The Light,' Jack and Daniel hash some things out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shedding Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jenlev](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Jenlev).



"You know why Sam left us alone," Daniel said, staring out into the warm distance, over the cool water.

Jack skipped a stone over the surface. Six hops; not bad from a sitting position. "Yeah."

"Do you want me, Jack? Sexually?"

"You know I do."

"Do you know that I want you back?"

Jack was silent for a moment. "Now I do."

"You really didn't?"

"Thought so sometimes. Wasn't sure. Never saw any reason you should."

"Is that supposed to be self-deprecating or do you mean that I present as very straight?"

"It means I never see what _anyone_ sees in me, and it means I haven't done a whole lot to endear myself to you over the years. Not as much as I'd have liked to." He skipped another stone. Seven hops. "As far as assessing your sexual preferences, insufficient data." He lifted another stone, and then closed his hand around it and looked at Daniel for the first time since they came out here. "I'm not interested in a quick fuck to relieve the sexual tension. If you have any intention of offering something like that, save your breath."

Daniel lay back on the blanket, one hand under his head and one draped over his belly. It moved his face to the edge of Jack's side vision. He was looking at Jack, his expression calm and open. Jack didn't twist to look full back at him.

"Before I was married," Daniel said, "I had about equal experience with men and women. Equal interest, equal disappointment, eventual disinterest. I've been in love, really in love, twice -- with Sha'uri and with you. I wouldn't suggest or accept the kind of quick fuck you're talking about, because it would break my heart. I understand that what I want isn't possible."

Jack turned his head and looked back out over the water.

"So," Daniel said, after a while, with the sound of laughter in his voice. "Gin rummy? I put a deck in the daypack."

Jack was surprised; he supposed it showed in the set of his shoulders. He didn't turn. "You're not just letting this go."

"What's to let go? I thought we just cleared the air." Daniel did a situp to come up beside him. "Sorry, did it look like I was lying there trying to be seductive or something? I really wasn't."

Jack dropped his head, failing to hide a smile. "It was working."

Daniel didn't seem to know quite what to make of that. After a minute, he said, "I can't really promise I won't do things like that, but I'll try to be more cognizant."

Jack chuckled. "Losing battle, Daniel. Pretty much anything you do gets me going if I don't keep a lid on it. That's on me, not on you."

"OK," Daniel said. A little doubtful, a little bemused. Not sure where they stood now that he'd offered to move on and Jack hadn't, exactly.

Jack dropped one leg down and rotated around to face him, leaning on one arm, the other draped over his raised knee. "Lemme spare us another hour of this, OK? I love you, Daniel. I've been hot for you since the first time I saw you but I've been suppressing shit like that for thirty years. Love, that's a whole nother can of worms. At arm's length I can handle it. I've been a commanding officer for a long time, and I can fit this into a construct where it's manageable for me. What I don't have is the training or experience to help me judge how making love with you would affect that. I didn't know you felt the same way; I need some time to digest that information. But the bottom line is that I have to remain capable of taking care of you people. I wouldn't deploy you any differently and I wouldn't grant you special favors and I wouldn't be affected by spats or petty jealousies or other private issues, so most of the spirit of the frat regs doesn't apply, but it's possible that it could debilitate me. _That's_ why I'm not all over you, Daniel. Not some homophobic upbringing, not the risk to my career or the program, not some patronizing protectiveness of -- anybody else's feelings. _I already love you too much_. Maybe that means we might as well go for it 'cause it can't be any worse. Maybe it's the difference between a functional CO and a compromised CO. I have no way to make that determination." He wrenched back around and winged the rock in his hand as far out across the low waves as he could. "I'm the only one I trust with you guys. I can't afford to let myself get any more fucked up."

Daniel sat for a long time looking at his hands while Jack threw stones. Then he shifted to sit cross-legged, dropped the hands into his lap, and said, "I thought I'd learned to stop underestimating you. I hadn't. I apologize."

"Don't sweat it," Jack said. He skipped the next stone; three hops. Damn.

Daniel waited a bit, then said, "Any interest in cards now?"

"No interest whatsoever," Jack said. He felt Daniel shift and added, "And no I don't want you to get lost. If you'd rather not be around me, that's different."

Daniel eased back into his cross-legged position. "Pretty much all I ever want is to be around you, Jack." He smiled. "We've always done companionable silence pretty well. That works for me."

"You don't have any questions?" Jack said, looking out at the seam between sea and sky. "There's nothing else you want to know?"

"There are a thousand things I want to know," Daniel replied calmly. "Ordinarily you don't answer personal questions, so ordinarily I don't ask."

"I answer when you ask."

Daniel thought back. "I guess you do. Only me?"

"Only you. Will you answer some of mine? You don't have to."

"Of course I will."

"'Cause you know you keep your private life closer to the vest than I do. You just fake people into thinking you're all open and accessible."

Quietly, Daniel said, "I'm open and accessible to you."

Jack took a steadying breath. Just talking with Daniel, finally talking, was having more of an effect on him than he'd expected, back when he used to wonder what would happen if they ever did. He let the breath out, and said, "A lot of experience?"

"Kind of a lot, yeah. Not recently." Daniel's tongue pushed out to dab at his lower lip; in Jack's peripheral vision, it looked unconscious. "Should I elaborate?"

Jack nodded. Threw a rock.

"A few relationships, but when it was a relationship the sexual stuff didn't start for a while and it stopped pretty fast and everybody moved on. I was trying to fall in love and I could never seem to manage it. I experimented with a lot of stuff, trying to find this transcendent thing that other people seemed to feel. Not just sex. Drugs and music and activism, too. Even anthropology, because I was trying to understand everybody else. Eventually I self-diagnosed a kind of high-level autism. I don't think, now, that I was right -- pat as it may sound, I think the trauma of my parents' death shut me down for a really, really long time -- but it's how I assessed myself then. Took me about six years to get there, all told." He stretched one leg out and bent the other knee up and leaned on it. "I didn't date in high school. Playing doctor with some girls when I was a kid was the extent of it for me through my mid-teens. When I was sixteen I went to college, and about two weeks in I had sex with a girl in the junior class, a one-night thing. I slept around after that. I was sixteen, seventeen and the place was full of young women who thought I was cute and innocent. Later on I fooled around with a few guys. I tried some threesomes and some different kinks. None of it left me anything but empty and hollow inside. It got to be more torture than enjoyment, so in grad school I just stopped. After my master's."

"The first one?"

Daniel nodded, and did the math for him. "I was twenty-one when I gave up on sex."

"Jesus, Daniel. What a time to stop."

"Yeah, just when it's supposed to be getting good, right? It's just that it wasn't good. Somebody would get hurt, or the best I could do was feel nothing instead of -- let down, or sick, or lonely. I never felt lonely after I masturbated. My right hand kept me satisfied enough and it was better than ... I don't know how to describe this. Not having the not-in-loveness be right in my face. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah."

"So if it's men you're really asking about, I've done pretty much everything except be penetrated. But it was a long time ago."

"Why not that? Not your thing?"

"I never trusted anyone enough."

"Not even fingers?"

"Not even fingers. Or tongues. I trusted Sha'uri but that stuff was taboo between men and women on Abydos."

"_Oral sex_ was taboo on Abydos?"

"Heterosexual anal sex and anal play were taboo on Abydos."

"I'll be damned." What that implied about homosexual corollaries made a few things click into place, looks exchanged between Skaara and his friends, assumptions about Jack and his men and Daniel that he hadn't been able to get a read on at the time.

"There's more about Abydos, but it's another story. I'll tell you if you want, I don't mind, but it's off the point. Since I came -- went -- back to live on Earth, I haven't had consensual sex with anyone. I spent a lot of years taking care of myself; I'm used to that. I prefer that. So that's what I do."

"That's not right, Daniel," Jack said, awkwardly. He'd gotten very hard listening to Daniel's frank sexual history, but he was a grown man and he could deal with an erection. What bothered him was the ache in his chest. "You shouldn't be alone like that."

"You shouldn't say things like that," Daniel said gently. "Not if you were listening to what I just told you."

Daniel loved him, and nobody alive but him, and Daniel wouldn't have sex anymore with people he didn't love. Nobody was saying it was Jack's fault that Daniel was alone; it wasn't his fault, it was the roll of the dice, hearts fell where they fell. But it sucked. It pissed him off. It wasn't right.

"So what about you?" Daniel said, changing the subject.

Jack lay back on the blanket, hands behind his head, and looked up at the alien clouds. Altocumulus, maybe nine, ten thousand feet. God he missed flying. "Girl next door, bed of my brother's pickup. I was sixteen, she was nearly eighteen. We thought the rubber broke. Neither of us knew the things looked so ... deflated, afterwards. I think we were thinkin', you know, water balloons." He grinned, and Daniel grinned, and for a minute Jack was silent because he just felt so fantastically good, lying next to Daniel, smiling, watching clouds roll by. Then after a while he picked up the story again. There was so much he wanted Daniel to know about him. "We laughed about it later, but the scare put her off me and we never did it again. I was a nice kid but kinda fly-by-night, didn't like to be tied down. I got infatuated at the drop of a hat, but I didn't really fall in love 'til I was thirty and married Sara." He sighed, watching Daniel trying to find a comfortable position for his legs; he'd worked through bent and straight and crossed and was out of options. "Lie down, Daniel. I won't read anything into it."

Daniel hesitated, then lay down the way he'd been, but without looking at Jack and putting the opposite hand behind his head so their elbows wouldn't bang, or brush.

"I don't remember how old I was when I figured out ... " He let out a harsh breath. This wasn't easy; he'd never said any of this out loud. "I wasn't a jock but I played a lot of sports and I had a lot of friends ... not close friends, just a lotta guys I got along with ... and some of them got hassled, and I used to look out for those guys, fight for those guys. Because of that, sometimes I got accused of being one of those guys. At some point it sank in that hey, whaddya know, I _was_. Some, anyway." He almost laughed, remembering skinny Jimmy McCullough standing beside him, turning to look at him, both of them scraped and battered and the enemy vanquished -- he didn't think he'd had a more satisfying brawl in all his years in the military -- and that look that said that Jimmy knew, and Jack's reward for being a stand-up guy was that Jimmy would never give up the secret. "I didn't go looking to find out for sure how much, because I got into the Academy and I pushed it down as far as I could. Never thought about it, never dreamed about it, always plenty of women around, had a lot of other things goin' on. Came up again later. Pun intended, I guess. On leave overseas with a buddy, too much to drink, seedy hotel. Started out as trading hand jobs, escalated into a dare, I ended up fucking the guy. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't even what I really wanted, but it damn near blew the top of my head off. I'd had some women that way over the years and I was never comfortable with it and I found out why. It's because it wasn't _that_. I never did it again. That's the grand total of my experience in that department." He grinned, and almost looked over. "I'd be a lousy lay, Daniel."

Daniel's silence sounded like skepticism. It was lame consolation anyway, and Jack knew it was a lie. He was good in bed. He loved Daniel. He'd have made it good.

"What you really wanted was to be penetrated?" Daniel asked.

Jack's whole body twinged, from his ass up to his scalp and down to his toes. He bit back an automatic defense and said, "I think so. I don't know. I've never let anyone mess around back there. Not even my wife." Thirty years, thirty _years_ denying something he knew he wanted that badly, handling it, mastering it, and the fucking universe had to throw him _Daniel_. "Lot of Chicago Irish, you know the stereotype; cops or priests or thugs. You'd think the military, same as law enforcement, right? But it's not. It's the seminary. Same collar, only it's metal instead of cloth." He cleared his throat; that was closer than he ever let himself come to self-pity, and it wasn't the risk of prosecution or dismissal keeping him from Daniel. "Anyway, so you don't have to ask, I wasn't sodomized in prison. I'd rather not talk about the other stuff right now."

In a low, calm voice, Daniel started, "You don't ever have to -- "

Suddenly Jack was turning, wrenching over onto his side, looking down into Daniel's face. "I do, Daniel. I have to. Want to, need to, you pick a verb, I don't care. I don't answer personal questions. I don't _talk_. I don't let people into my house or into my head. Except for you. This isn't foreplay, this isn't substitute sex -- this is real, this is important. _I don't know anything about you_. I want to know. Everything. Everything you're willing to tell me. And I want to tell you. Everything."

Daniel hadn't moved or blinked. "I want that too," he said softly.

"OK," Jack said, letting out a breath. His heart was pounding. He was angry, and aching, and half-blind with desire. "OK." He looked down and found his hand fisted in the short sleeve of Daniel's T-shirt, twisting. He forced his fingers open and pulled away. "Sorry." He flopped onto his back and let out a low groan and threw his forearm over his eyes. "Some day at the beach, huh."

"It's a good day, Jack," Daniel said softly. "This is a good thing." He cleared this throat. "That said, however ... " He leaned forward and tugged at his boot laces. When he had them loosened halfway he pried the boots off, stuffed his socks in them, and rolled the legs of his pants up. "I'm gonna go stand in the water for a few minutes."

"Kinda rocky," Jack said. This wasn't the sort of beach you danced barefoot on.

"And cold," Daniel acknowledged. "That's the point."

Jack knew he should just let him go. Before, he'd have just let him go. But the conversation had opened him up too much, lowered his barriers, and he didn't want Daniel to leave his side. He lifted his arm, said, "Daniel ... "

"I'll be right back," Daniel said, cutting him off. "Or you can join me if you like. I'm too sexually aroused to continue this right now. Give me a couple of minutes to cool off, OK?"

He got up without looking at Jack and made his way down to the water. Jack felt like a piece of himself was tearing loose. He didn't want Daniel to leave the blanket. He didn't want to cool off, he didn't want to kill the arousal; not acting on it sucked, but it was good arousal, _wonderful_ arousal. The prospect of killing it was gray and depressing.

He elbowed up and watched Daniel down to the tideline. The stones must be hurting the soles of his feet, but he didn't mince; he placed each foot with slow care, minimizing the discomfort, not making a show of it. When the cold water sluiced over his feet, his shoulders came back and his spine stiffened and at the sight of it Jack thought he might come in his pants. Then Daniel relaxed ... and relaxed some more, and stepped in to his shins. The relief of the boner going down was clear.

Jack could surveillance-proof his basement. Daniel was over all the time, as often as not spent the night crashed out on the sofabed in the basement rec room. No change in the established pattern, no hard evidence. Intelligence personnel had already thoroughly sniffed around his relationship with each team member and found squat; what they could dig up on him and Carter would only be a red herring. So he let himself think it again, finally, seriously: _Maybe we should just go for it 'cause it couldn't be any worse_.

Was he making bad judgments because of what he wanted and couldn't have? Would he make worse judgments now that he knew he could have it and he was the one saying no? Truth was, he didn't even know if Daniel would say yes. It was unlikely that Daniel would dismiss the risk to the program the way he had. For Daniel, that would probably be the dealbreaker. Daniel would see it in mythic terms, epic terms; heroes sacrificed themselves, heroes didn't get to live happily ever after, heroes didn't get to have private lives. They gave their all. That should work for him; that was the military way. This was the real deal. Worlds at stake. Daniel would be right to say no, on those terms.

He hadn't given him a chance to yet, because as long as Daniel hadn't said no, something was still possible. He needed to hear that no. Clear and declarative. No meant no.

But if it was yes? If Daniel started talking about Spartans and Greeks and cultures where sex and love were integral to the warrior bond, if Daniel started talking about addressing the fundamental problem of the military's regulations, if Daniel started talking about forcing reality to bend to them instead of acquiescing to an injustice ... if Daniel said "I'm not saying this to manipulate you into what I want, Jack -- the truth is that in my best judgment your command would not be impaired"?

If he'd been back on Earth, he'd have walked straight into Hammond's office and told him it was time to retask his team. When Hammond argued against breaking up Carter and Jackson and Teal'c, he'd have had to request reassignment for himself. And then he couldn't keep them in one piece anymore.

They shouldn't be going out there. The regs weren't the problem; their record was. Jack should be commanding three lesser mission specialists. Carter and Jackson and Teal'c were irreplaceable experts who should be sitting behind desks and doing fieldwork only in thoroughly secured locations. Hammond knew that. Hammond _knew_ that, and had never rotated them out. Because they kept saving the world. Because things that needed to happen didn't happen unless it was them going out there. The four of them. The twisted, fucked-up, broken four of them. Bonded closer than blood and held together by threads.

Threads he could break, right now, with one touch of a fingertip.

He took off his boots and socks and rolled up his pants and went down to stand beside Daniel in the water. "You'd say no anyway," he said. "You'll always put the program first."

"Can't fight City Hall," Daniel said. His tone was mild, and it should have sounded like agreement, but it wasn't. "Honestly? I'm not capable of saying no to you. Not in this. I'm sorry; I should share the responsibility more, I guess. Not put it all on you. Certainly I respect your reasons. I understand them as stated and ... Yeah. Well. But no, Jack. I wouldn't say no."

"Why?" Jack said.

Daniel huffed out an exasperated laugh. "It's not enough that I'm just weak-willed?"

"You're not."

"You're trying to get me to talk you into it."

"Maybe. I don't know. I do want to know why."

"Because in my opinion it wouldn't compromise your command. Only you can judge whether it would make your position emotionally unbearable, but I don't see you behaving any differently in the field. We've all stayed in control of a huge amount of psychological baggage for a long time. We all do our jobs in spite of it, or maybe better because of it, or whatever, and you're the ... leader, in that, the role model. You're really good at that. Also, because I don't think they'd catch us. You could spy-proof your basement and we could go on exactly the way we have been except that when I sleep there you sleep with me. We could make a thermal Jack dummy to put in your bed. It's all doable. I'd rather be tormented by infrequency than tormented by total lack. Also, because I'd rather fight if they did catch us. I think we could win, and I think we could do it without the internal dissension weakening our defense of the planet. Most of the SG teams have been quasi-military from the start, and the military's supervision of the Stargate program is arguable. A sexual scandal would be an incredibly stupid event to force a reevaluation, but reevaluation is going to be necessary sometime in the next five years. I could make an extremely strong case for amended regulations and protocols. Sexual orientation is actually the least of them. There's a long list."

"This is you _not_ making an effort to talk me into it?"

"Yes. This is me not even trying. This is me just trying to answer your question."

"Jesus, Daniel."

They stood, hands in pockets, listening to the water slosh around their feet, listening to the sea breathe. The sun had moved partway down the sky, mostly covered by clouds; Carter and the kid would be gone for another couple of hours.

Finally Daniel said, "I want to keep talking, if you want that. I also want you to say screw it and grab me and ... what's a good, silly word, 'ravish'? Muscle me onto that blanket and have your way with me. But if something physical is going to happen, I'm not sure it's a good idea for it to happen here. It's like a dream here. It's like we're on vacation. The smart thing to do is finish out the downtime and go back to work. If you change your mind about this, you should stealth your rec room and let the rest happen, sometime when I'd be over hanging out anyway." He smiled. "Or if you let me know in advance, I'd bring the Jack doll. If I had a Jack doll. Which, you know, I wish."

"No summer romance, huh."

"It's not really summer."

"Beach, though."

"Yeah. Actually not a very romantic beach, either, but yeah."

"Romance is important to you?"

Daniel laughed. It was a real laugh, and it was beautiful, and Jack's sidelong glance shifted quickly away to re-survey the ocean. "It's really not. You changed your mind, didn't you?"

"Hadn't made up my mind. Starting to."

"Work will help. Couple of missions, see how it goes."

"Yeah. What would change if we ... it's kinda changed already. From this."

"I think so, yes. But I can't be any more sure than you can. Wait for some more data. Revisit the question in a more familiar setting."

"Yeah," Jack said, kicking at the water. "OK." But when he turned to go back, Daniel turned with him, and when Daniel dropped down and stretched out Jack knelt too close, and when Jack lowered himself to his hands they were on either side of Daniel, and he was looking down into Daniel's face.

Daniel reached up and closed a hand on the T-shirt at Jack's chest. It could have turned into a pull or a push. Jack's heartbeat thundered against Daniel's fingers.

Jack shifted one leg over Daniel's legs. On all fours over him now. "Not a summer romance," he said. "Five years ... "

Daniel gave a smile that amounted to a nod, and was almost sad.

Jack lowered his head, slowly, and touched his lips to Daniel's. At first the feel of it didn't even register, just the fact of it, his lips, _Daniel's_ lips, and the shrieking battle in his head between _don't do this!_ and _not stopping now_. Then a breath came out of Daniel, going right into his mouth, and it did.

It was soft. Daniel had made his mouth soft. His lips were _tender_, and fuller than Jack's, and they weren't pursed in some kind of cliche and they weren't stunned loose and mushy, they were aware and knowing and _soft_ and they received the touch of his as though Daniel loved him and they did this all the time. Jack shifted his mouth a little, kissed a little more, just lips, and Daniel kissed back. It was the gentlest, easiest kiss Jack had experienced since he was married.

"Oh, _god_," he breathed, against those gentle lips. "_Daniel_." He drew back, awed, blinking. Daniel's eyes opened slowly. They were beautiful. They were Daniel's eyes. There was a smile in them. They looked happy. "Daniel."

"Jack," Daniel said. The way he'd said Jack's name a million times before, but softened -- a gentle mockery of the way he always said it, forbearance and curiosity and caution softened into ... affection.

Jack rolled off him, onto his back, and slapped his hands over his face, and moaned. "Fuck."

"I guess that means you're not going to hump my brains out?" Daniel said. There was enough amusement in his tone to cover whether he felt disappointment or relief.

"God, Daniel." Jack had never been this overwhelmed by feeling, confused impulses. "I don't know which is gonna burst open first, my heart or my fucking fly."

Daniel rolled up onto an elbow and looked down at him. "I've got a revised plan, if you want to hear it."

Jack groaned this time, louder, and let his arms flop up over his head. Submission, he supposed; that was how Daniel the anthropologist would read it, that was probably how he meant it.

Daniel laid a hand on his ribs. It was a warm, familiar hand, and Jack let his eyes slide closed, let it relax him. Daniel, using touch as a drug to make him receptive to whatever idea he'd cooked up. Then the hand shifted in place, and Daniel's thumb ran up the side of his pec, and stroked a circle around and over a nipple.

Jack grunted, his hips thrusting up as if they'd been pulled by a string. His vision actually blurred as his eyes flew open; the clouds frizzed into a snowy screen. "Fucking _hell_, Daniel," he managed.

"I'm going to blow you," Daniel said, reaching to ease Jack's belt open. "You're going to let me." He slipped the first fastening in Jack's fly. Jack's hands twitched but stayed where they were. "We're not going to argue about me swallowing." He slipped the next button; Jack felt the movement on his erection, and let out an almost audible whine. "Afterwards, when you can think straight, I'm going to propose the rest of this plan." Another button, and another, Daniel pushing up to his knees, Jack thinking _christ daniel christ i can't let you_, and Daniel said, "You're not making love to me. You're receiving fellatio from a subordinate. Lesser offense. You'll get over it if you have to. Close your eyes."

"Daniel, I love y-- " Jack tried to sit up, but a firm hand on his chest pressed him back while the other hand popped the last button and started spreading his pants.

"I know," Daniel said. "Back atcha. Lift your hips."

Jack lifted, and Daniel pushed pants and boxers down far enough to get at him, and then he did close his eyes because Daniel's long, warm fingers were easing him out and up, _Daniel's_ fingers, Daniel's fingers on his _penis_, and Daniel was leaning down, and he couldn't look, he couldn't think, he couldn't make himself stop it.

He felt breath first, and damp heat, as Daniel's mouth came down around him, and then Daniel's mouth closed, wet just-licked lips, cushion of tongue, soft palate, and his own mouth opened and he dragged his arm down and jammed his forearm into it barely in time to stifle the sound, push it out in a pleading muffle through his nose. Daniel's mouth came up in an easy pull, gentle fingers at the base holding him up straight, and Jack bit down on his own arm and made a pathetic warning sound.

Daniel gave the crown a tender suck and then bobbed down twice, slow and wet and easy, and came up with his tongue curling, swirling around and over the head. Jack came like the sea: ebb and then flow, blood and strength and sensation sucked out of his limbs like an outgoing tide and then ecstasy surging in, sweeping through him, breaking into climax.

He groaned into his forearm. Daniel swallowed patiently. Jack pulsed for a long time, as if it would never stop, bottomless well, pleasure intensifying after the first spike of climax, and felt the short firm up-and-down of Daniel's fingers. He kept his hips down somehow, but they were jiggling and his knees had drawn up. He thought it was bunched clothes pressing his balls until he realized it was Daniel's other hand, slipped under his leg -- Daniel's knuckles, rubbing his testicles through his fatigues. He bit deeper into his arm but he couldn't stop the sounds coming out and he couldn't feel his own teeth.

A sound from Daniel pushed through the orgasmic fog -- a breathy, overwhelmed sound, somewhere between pleasure and protest. Other sounds followed it, a dam breaking, soft _mmf_s and slurps as Jack's cock softened out of the perfect balance Daniel's mouth had made between swallowing and maintaining a seal. Daniel's fingers released him reluctantly, Daniel's lips slid off. Daniel's hand came out from under him -- he tried to grunt _no, don't stop, that's so good_, that gentle rubbing as the last twinges went through him -- and Jack let his arm flop to the side and opened his eyes to see Daniel straightening, easing his spine and neck, reaching to readjust Jack's clothes.

Jack tried to say something, but his throat wouldn't work; his jaw was locked from chewing his own arm. Daniel said "Lift again" -- thickly, unsteadily. Jack lifted, and Daniel pulled his boxers up, carefully, and then his pants. Daniel didn't try to close them. He swallowed, his eyes sliding briefly shut; his fingers came up just short of his lips, vaguely, as if he wasn't aware that Jack was looking at him. Then he went to sit back on his haunches and ended up thumping back hard on his ass. He hooked his arms around his knees and turned his head, blinking at the sea.

Neither of them said anything for a long time. After a while, Jack reached down to adjust his dick and close his pants, hiking his hips a little. He re-threaded his belt and then let his legs slide down, let his hands rest on his belly, closed his eyes. His arm was spit-sticky and it ached. He didn't want to know what kind of a mark he'd left.

"Little more than I bargained for," Daniel said, finally.

"Yeah," Jack said. Then, "I _hate_ it that you're so good at that."

Daniel rotated around on his butt and eased himself flat, as if he had to be very careful with his body. He didn't answer.

"You still hard?" Jack said. Not sure why he was asking; not sure what he should do about it if Daniel was, not sure he wanted to find out that Daniel wasn't, that blowing Jack had burst his arousal bubble, that Daniel had realized it was all a delusion, a fantasy, a confusion of friendship and dedication blown to hell by the unpleasant taste and texture of Jack's penis and Jack's semen, or that Jack's were no better than any of the others he'd tried. Not sure that he could stand hearing Daniel tell him that he felt sick, let down, hollow. But needing to know.

"No, I came actually," Daniel said. "Sort of defeated the purpose. Blowjob was supposed to keep it clean."

Cleaner than Jack humping him and both of them coming in their fatigues. It didn't matter; they had spare clothes back in the palace, soap and water. Daniel was trying to distract him from the admission that he'd creamed himself giving Jack head. Just from giving him head; both hands had been on Jack at all times.

"Shit, Daniel," Jack said.

"Don't turn it into a thing," Daniel said. "Don't get sappy about it. That was to take the edge off, that's all. Friendly assistance. No big deal. Give me a second and I'll tell -- "

"Why not?" Jack said, looking over at him. Close to angry now. "Don't hand me back my own shit about not getting more attached to you. If it's because that was like every other crappy disappointing experience you've ever had, just fucking say it. Make our lives a lot easier."

"It wasn't," Daniel said. "Don't get preemptively pissed at me. And don't expect me to wax lyrical about it. It was exactly what both of us dreamed it would be. Just don't freak out about that."

"I'm not freaking out," Jack said.

"OK."

"OK." Jack took a breath, then sat up and hauled the daypack over from the edge of the blanket, pulled out the canteen and wet a handkerchief. "Here," he said. "Take your pants off, give me the shorts, wipe up. I'll rinse 'em out, if they don't dry you can go commando 'til we get back."

Daniel did as he was told without complaint, and a few minutes later they were back lying side by side the same way they'd been, Daniel's boxers and the handkerchief laid out on the rocks to dry. The front of his pants hadn't stained, just the bottom of his shirt where he'd had it tucked way down. That was rinsed and drying too, a loose ruck on his belly.

"So this plan," Jack said.

"We tell Sam and Teal'c."

Jack didn't sputter; maybe the blowjob had dosed him with enough endorphins and oxytocin to act as a sedative. At the same time, randomly, he thought that Daniel could have just said that fifteen minutes ago and it would have killed the boner instantly; and he thought _lotta hassle hiding the evidence if we're just gonna **tell** them_. The net result was that he laughed.

"I'm not kidding."

"Laughing at the situation, not you. Go on."

"For you the question seems to come down to how this would affect the team. Your leadership of it is one aspect of that; the other team members' reaction is another. Conveniently enough, they're just the people to go to for advice about whether this would damage your command, and at the same time you can find out whether they could continue to work with us under the revised conditions."

"Did I say I needed advice?"

"You said you didn't have the training or experience to make the assessment. What do you usually do when that's the case?"

"I ask you guys," Jack replied dutifully, getting it.

"They know already. It's not like it'll be a big bombshell. Sam took Loran away for the day so we could do exactly what we've done."

"Not exactly."

"Close enough. Actually I couldn't tell whether she expected us to fuck it out of our systems or have a mature and forthright conversation in which we agreed to let it go, but close enough either way."

"You talked?" Jack said, frowning. He'd been well aware of the spirit of Carter's intent when she brightly suggested taking Loran off for a hike and a picnic in the hills inland of the palace, but he didn't think it had been as calculated as to involve discussion. Private discussion. With Daniel. About him.

"Briefly. Obliquely. She approached me."

"And she _said_ ... ?"

"She said 'Please don't tell the colonel this, but,' and then she said some things that I'm not going to tell you."

"Fuck."

"The point is that she and Teal'c aren't blind and they both want this sorted out as much as I do and I hope you do. We're all adults and we should act like it. You and I have pretty much failed to agree to let this go. Anything more than furtive, occasional sex is patently impossible under the circumstances. Overcoming impossible odds is what our team does on a regular basis. The more I think about it, the more I think that talking to them is the right way to proceed." Then he smiled, very slowly, with only the slightest hint of trying to restrain it. "But you're the boss."

"Carter should be exempt," Jack said, a little more harshly than he meant to. "Extenuating circumstances."

"But then it's not the whole team, and we'd be lacking her invaluable input. And I know what the circumstances are, Jack. She didn't tell me. I've known all along. Same as they know about this."

"I hate that you give such good head, Daniel," Jack said, pushing -- pushing back to before this proposal, before the Carter thing he couldn't stand to talk about, pushing back to the thing Daniel wouldn't talk about, knowing he was doing it, doing it on purpose.

"Well, I kind of lied about that."

"About what?"

"I never did that before."

"You said in college you did -- "

" -- everything except be penetrated. Actually I think I covered myself there, I said 'pretty much.' I wouldn't take it up the ass and I wouldn't suck dick. Made me a textbook 'top,' I guess. Maybe that's why I didn't say it. Because I figured that had to be what you are and I was showing my belly to the alpha male to avoid conflict."

Jack said, "Gah," and covered his face with his hands again.

"So I think that when we get back we should radio the base and ask Te -- "

"That doesn't make sense," Jack said, and flipped over onto his stomach, and looked hard at Daniel. "You gave up on sex without trying things you _wanted_. How did you know that sucking dick wouldn't blow you away? How did you know -- "

"It did blow me away," Daniel said. Looking at him, and then rolling onto his side, pillowing his head on a bent arm. "What we did just now gave me exactly the feeling I never got through sex when I was young."

Pressing his chest down into the sand through the blanket, pressing down on the ache there, Jack said, "Maybe it would have given you that then. Maybe you were afraid of getting what you wished for so you manufactured an out for youself. Maybe I'm not what you -- Maybe I'm just a ... I don't know, am I even your friend? Just a guy you trust with your life so you trust me with your body and you think that's love because you never let yourself find out. For sure. With a guy."

"You missed one," Daniel said, and when Jack gave him a halfheartedly irritated _What?_ look said, "And maybe I can't have you and that makes you safe, because I can pretend I'm trying but I'm still in no real danger of getting what I wish for."

Jack crossed his arms and laid his forehead on them and closed his eyes and sighed, hard. "No matter what I do you're gonna talk about Carter."

"Project it onto Sam if you like. It could just as easily describe you, and contrary to what you believe, I am not going to talk about Sam. You-and-Sam is between you and Sam. All I did was tell you that I'm aware of it. Then you launched another warning shot across my bow."

"Nose," Jack said. "Not bow. Air Force here. Airplanes have noses."

"Nautical metaphors, aeronautical metaphors, same difference," Daniel said, with a smile in his voice, because they'd had an absurd extended argument two weeks earlier about whether the phrase "same difference" was nonsense or not. "I don't want you because you're unavailable," Daniel said. "I want you to be available. I'm not looking to you to fulfill my decades-old needs because you're close to hand. Believe me, even _my_ psyche isn't that stupid. I could accuse you of the same thing, and maybe I should. Maybe you fixated on me because I'm the one person even more forbidden to you than Sam, or because no matter how sensible you seem to be about it homosexual urges still appall you so you direct them at the one guy you really really _really_ can't have and use that as an excuse for not acting on them, or because wanting the most forbidden human being in the universe is punishment for failing your wife but doesn't qualify as infidelity because it's a guy so it doesn't count. Shall I continue?"

"God. Please don't."

"No more warning shots?"

"I was pissed that you gave such good head."

"The state you were in, Don Rickles could have brought you off."

Jack lifted his head. "_Don Rickles_??"

Daniel was laughing. "Well, I don't know. You pick somebody. He's the ugliest man alive or something, right? Isn't that part of his routine?"

Jack pushed up onto his side and ran a hand over Daniel's head, over his ear and his neck, back up into his hair. Between the absurdity of it, the heart-melting beauty of Daniel's laughter, the emotional exhaustion, the postorgasmic warmth, the crashing impossibility of all this and Daniel there, in the middle of it, right next to him, with that fucking _brilliant_ mind and articulate tongue and more empathic intuitive insight than any human being that isolated had any right to have ... Jack was beside himself and he just reached out, and when he saw the laughter in Daniel's eyes flatten into yearning and wariness and hurt at the touch he just pulled him in, gathered him in with all his limbs and scooched close and wrapped him up and just said, "Daniel. Daniel."

All those words, all that brilliance, all that genius and that strength collapsed in his arms, melted against him, and Daniel moaned into the hollow of his neck. The kind of sound you made when you'd been holding it together by a thread and the thread had snapped and it hurt too much for you to even cry.

"I love you," Jack said, holding Daniel's head against him, Daniel's body against him, locking his leg around Daniel's legs, getting all that long slim body as close against him as he could. "I love you more than life. I'm a tough guy, Daniel, I'm a resourceful guy, all that stuff, but this is way bigger than me. It's way bigger than sex or the Stargate program or my past or your past. We're in your territory here. Meaning-of-life stuff. It's too big for me, it's not in my control. I don't have the kind of courage you do. But I'll try. We'll talk to the team if that's what you think we should do. I'll try. Just don't let go if I fuck up."

"I won't," Daniel said. Even melted, even moved to the point where he was lying stunned in Jack's arms, he was as big as Jack, as strong as Jack. His arms were around Jack, too. He was holding Jack, too. "But this isn't exactly my territory either. You're not the only one who's scared."

Jack drew his head back, got his arm up under Daniel's neck to support his and angled that shoulder down so that he could rest his head on the blanket and just look at him. "Not so different from what we've been doing for four, five years. Walking blind, into ... wonder."

A slow smile spread Daniel's lips, and the glint of amused affection came back into his eyes. "Tish, that's poetry," he said.

"Don't tell on me," Jack said, his free hand combing gently through Daniel's soft hair.

They kissed again then, after a false start and a shy hesitation that left them both smiling, wry and embarrassed; it started tender and then awed, like the other one, but then Jack was sinking into Daniel's mouth with a moan and they were having slow, slippery sex with their tongues and Daniel was starting to make those breathy coming noises, and Jack started to wonder if it was physiologically possible to come when you were at least an hour from being able to get it up.

"Oh, god, Jack," Daniel moaned against his mouth, when they drew back enough to swallow. "God."

"Mmm," Jack agreed, pushing back in, sucking and stroking, and then pulled back enough to say, "My come tastes really good in your mouth. That's just wrong, isn't it?"

"No, it's hot," Daniel said, and pushed Jack's mouth open wide, fucking it with his tongue, around and under and over, and Jack groaned and tightened on him and groaned again and gasped out of it, too much, too much stimulation. "Fuck," Daniel said, laughing again, breathy, eyes bright and dazed. "I have to come and I can't even get hard."

Jack stroked his head, trying to soothe them both, and Daniel shivered and then relaxed, his eyes sliding closed. He still had his glasses on, had had them on through all of this, and Jack thought about taking them off him but if Daniel went to sleep he'd sleep with him and they were going to have to start walking back, the sun was getting lower and he could just start to feel the bends-like tickle in his cells, in his bloodstream, that meant they were due for another hit back at the palace.

"We need to go back soon," Daniel murmured.

"Yeah." Jack combed fingers through his hair. "Talk about the rest on the way." They'd walked about an hour from the palace, leisurely pace. Return trip should take maybe forty minutes if they didn't dawdle.

Telling the rest of the team. It was terrifying in a bone-numbing way, like the numbness he could still feel as an echo in every cell of his body, seeing Daniel's silhouette on that balcony, processing that Daniel was on the _other_ side of the rail, empty air and rushing void and blank eternity beyond it. Metaphorically, this situation was nearly as precarious.

When he was on his feet, after they'd folded the blanket and he'd turned to stow it in the daypack and heft the pack to his shoulder instead of watching Daniel strip out of his pants to put his boxers back on, when they'd taken the first couple of steps back toward the palace, the gate, their team, their lives, he said, "Do you think this happened because I almost just lost you?"

It was ten whole steps more before Daniel answered. "I don't know," he said, reaching to pull the pack off Jack's shoulder and sling it onto his own, because Jack had carried it out and now it was his turn. "I think we may almost-lose each other a lot more times before this is all over. But you found me, this time." He flashed Jack a smile. "And that makes all the difference."


End file.
